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A story hit Digg over the weekend, and has been blowing up since about Jesse McPherson, an unfortunate web designer who came home from his week at SXSW to discover that his home had been broken into. This story hits really close to home for us at Gamervision, since not only did it happen in Philadelphia, it happened to a friend to the site, a man who was one of our original team of web application developers.

The thief made off with a Halo-edition Xbox 360, an old powerbook computer (with the wrong charging cable), and the victim's television set. Jesse decided to take his case not to the Philadelphia police department, but to the web.

Using Google maps to locate any and all local pawn shops, Jesse set off to the closest one looking to see if anyone remembers someone bringing in the missing items. The pawn shop employee told him that someone had in fact brought in a powerbook with a dead battery and no charger. Jesse snapped some pics from the pawn shop's security camera and posted them on his blog.

Jesse apparently works with the best people in the world, as he came into work to find that his co-workers had all taken up a collection to buy him a new 360 and a copy of Halo 3. He went home and logged back into his existing XBL account, and had this message waiting for him:

Thief's message (NSFW)

That's right: the thief left Jesse a voicemail saying that he had Jesse's 360, and that if he wanted it back, he'd have to buy it. Jesse, being clearly more intelligent than the thief, realized that this ciminal mastermind most likely used a public XBL account to send the message. And it turned out that he did.

So Jesse, being an upstanding citizen, called the police and reported all these details. He was told to call back during business hours, and in the time between that call and the next business hour, Jesse received two more threatening messages from the culpruit. When Jesse was finally able to get a detective on the phone, he relayed the details, including the fact that the crook was now harrassing him, and was promptly hung up on. 

So Jesse took his case to the people via his blog. He posted the pictures from the security camera. He posted the first voicemail. He posted the thief's XBL name. And the internet responded, swiftly and with much vigor.

The voice behind the voicemail has been found out. He's a 16 year old kid living at home with his parents in Philadelphia. Now, this kid claims that he bought the 360 from someone else, and was just trying to resell it. He claims he didn't break into Jesse's home and that the web has got the wrong man. 

Find me a thief who doesn't say that...

The kid saw his picture on the internet and was scared enough to bring Jesse back the laptop. But he still maintains his innocence.

Anyway, it just goes to show the power of the web to do a job that traditional law enforcement is ill equipped to handle. It also shows that if you're going to send a ransom note, don't do it from a publicly registered account.

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